London after the riots (1)

Bouncing back

The city’s image has taken a knock. How bad is the damage?

THE cover of the current issue of Private Eye, a fortnightly satirical magazine, shows cars ablaze in a London street as marauding, hoodie-wearing youngsters look on. The riots in early August coincided inconveniently with the city's first rehearsals for next year's Olympic games, prompting the magazine's cover caption: “This is the worst opening ceremony ever.” Now that the broken glass has been swept up in the affected areas and the insurance claims have been filed, London is taking stock of the damage to its international reputation. Will its brand recover quickly, or might the riots have done long-term harm to the capital's attractiveness to foreigners?

Urban brands are built up over many years and “don't swing around so quickly”, says Simon Anholt, an analyst who specialises in the reputations of cities and charts their rise and fall in an annual report published in association with GfK Roper Custom Research, a market-research firm. If tourists and investors were put off cities by sporadic natural and unnatural disasters, he points out, then the fortunes of New York, London and Tokyo would be “a lot more erratic” than they have proved to be. Serious investors, he says, may make an allowance for extra security, but will be largely undeterred. And how many non-Canadians recall that the centre of Vancouver was hit by riots in June after the local team lost an ice hockey game? “Memories are mercifully short,” says Mr Anholt.

Mark Di-Toro of VisitBritain, an organisation that has launched a £100m ($164m) campaign to lure tourists in 2012, is similarly upbeat. “We've had our fair share of setbacks, from the 7/7 bombings to the volcanic ash cloud and British Airways strikes,” he says. “All have had only temporary effects.” The European Tour Operators Association, an industry body, reported only 330 immediate cancellations—a puny 0.2% of all bookings.

Estate agents peddling London's pricey property are also optimistic that the market has not been noticeably affected by images of unrest in the suburbs. Robert Bartlett, chief executive of Chesterton Humberts, an estate-agent chain, says he believes that the damage is “short term, at most”, and that unrest and destruction are unlikely to cause foreign investors, who regard London as a safe investment option, to change their minds. Savills, another property group, said last week when reporting its results that it had not observed any adverse affects on the market so far.

The swift response to the riots on London's streets may even encourage people to think that London is a friendlier place than they had previously imagined. Images of defiant “broom armies”, gathering spontaneously to clear up the debris, helped lift an initially despairing mood. As she helps with the repainting of damaged buildings in Clapham, Sara Compton, a young American volunteer, says the big clear-up has been “the best dating opportunity all summer”.

A spokesman for the mayor says the riots have highlighted London's resilience. The Notting Hill carnival, the capital's main annual African-Caribbean festival, was scheduled to go ahead as The Economist went to press, although the presence of over 6,000 police on the streets may dampen the mood somewhat, and the main event will end at a sedate 7pm. As for riot-scarred Tottenham, where tourists rarely tread, London's mayor, Boris Johnson, has promised to invest £8 million to improve the area around its stadium, home to Tottenham Hotspur football club. When the going gets tough, the English enthusiasm for football can usually be relied upon to lighten the gloom.